Affirmative Blocks

Bettendorf HW Tournament of Champions
AFFIRMATIVE BLOCKS
A/T: PENSION BENEFITS TOO HIGH...................................................................................2

A/T: PENSIONS ARE TRILLIONS UNDERFUNDED.................................................................3
A/T: PENSIONS ARE UNDERFUNDED.................................................................................4
A/T: PENSION UNDERFUNDING DESTROYING ECONOMY.....................................................5
A/T: PENSION UNDERFUNDING IS SINKING CALIFORNIA.....................................................6
A/T: TEACHER UNIONS SUCK...........................................................................................7
A/T: CAN’T FIRE TEACHERS..............................................................................................8
A/T: TEACHER SALARIES/BENEFITS TOO COSTLY...............................................................9
A/T: QUALITY OF SCHOOLS DECLINING...........................................................................10
A/T: TEACHER UNIONS KILL CHARTER SCHOOLS..............................................................11
A/T: CHARTER SCHOOLS GOOD......................................................................................12
A/T: US EDUCATION DECLINING IN COMPETITVENESS......................................................13
A/T: TEACHER UNIONS BLOCK REFORM..........................................................................14
A/T: UNIONS BLOCK MERIT PAY.....................................................................................15
MERIT PAY BAD............................................................................................................16
PRIVATIZATION/VOUCHERS BAD....................................................................................17
A/T: ARGUMENTS MUST ONLY BE PUBLIC SECTOR UNIONS..............................................18
A/T: PUBLIC SECTOR UNIONS INCREASE DEFICIT SPENDING.............................................19
A/T: PUBLIC SECTOR UNIONS INCREASE TAXES...............................................................20
A/T: UNIONS BLOCK VOLUNTEERISM..............................................................................21
A/T: UNIONS LEAD TO POLITICAL CORRUPTION...............................................................22
A/T: WORKERS FORCED TO JOIN UNIONS........................................................................23
A/T: UNIONS ENTRENCH DISCRIMINATION......................................................................24
A/T: UNIONS ARE MONOPOLIES......................................................................................25
A/T: PUBLIC SECTOR UNIONS ARE ANTIDEMOCRATIC.......................................................26
A/T: PUBLIC SECTOR WAGES TOO HIGH..........................................................................27
A/T: PUBLIC SECTOR BENEFITS TOO HIGH.......................................................................28
A/T: PUBLIC SECTOR UNIONS ENCUMBER GOVERNMENT..................................................29
A/T: CONTRACTORS MORE EFFICIENT.............................................................................30
A/T: PUBLIC SECTOR UNIONS INCREASE GOVERNMENT....................................................31
A/T: PUBLIC SECTOR UNION CAMPAIGN DONATIONS BAD................................................32
A/T: PUBLIC SECTOR UNION LOBBYING BAD....................................................................33
A/T: PUBLIC SECTOR UNIONS INEFFICIENT......................................................................34
A/T: PRIVATIZATION GOOD............................................................................................35
A/T: STEVEN GREENHUT................................................................................................36
INDEX
AFFIRMATIVE FILE
A/T: POLICE STRIKES HARM SECURITY............................................................................37

A/T: TSA STRIKES HARM SECURITY.................................................................................38
A/T: CAP AND TRADE BAD..............................................................................................39
A/T: COLLECTIVE BARGAINING BAD................................................................................40
A/T: COLLECTIVE BARGAINING HARMS STUDENTS...........................................................41
A/T: UNIONS CREATE FREE-RIDING PROBLEMS................................................................42
A/T: COMPETITION MOTIVATES WORKERS......................................................................43
A/T: PENSION BENEFITS TOO HIGH
(__) Benefits of public employees are not overly generous since they often stay at their jobs for a long period of time,
like teachers, and they do not receive other benefits such as social security. John Kilgour writes in the Compensation
Benefits Review1:
It must be
The remaining issue is that public sector pension benefits are overly generous. When compared to what has happened in the private sector, this point has considerable appeal.
remembered, however, that most public sector employees pay for a large portion of their retirement benefit and
that they tend to stay with their employer for a long time. Furthermore, many public sector employees,
especially teachers, police officers and firefighters, are not covered by Social Security. Their employers are
not subject to the 6.2% tax on payroll, and the employees do not get the Social Security retirement benefit
available to almost everyone else.
(__) We shouldn’t conflate pension issues with other benefits. Pension underfunding is merely short-term fluctuations
that are to be solved in the long term. John Kilgour writes in the Compensation Benefits Review2:
The debate about state and local pension plans has taken on a life of its own, and it is often entwined with other postretirement
employee benefits, mainly health care, and with budgetary problems in general. That is understandable because the taxpayer ultimately foots the bill for them all. From the point of credit
rating agencies and the bond market, they all amount to debt.
However, that is the extent of their similarity. Pension costs are largely prefunded by employee and employer contributions
creating accumulated assets available for investment. The amount of under- or overfunding will fluctuate in
the short run. Given the long-run nature of pension liabilities, this should not be a problem, provided the parties make their
required contributions.
1
Kilgour, John G. "Public Sector Pension Plans in California: How Big Is the Problem?" Compensation Benefits Review 39.16 (2007): 16-26. SAGE. Web. 5 Apr. 2010.
2
Ibid
2
AFFIRMATIVE FILE
A/T: PENSIONS ARE TRILLIONS UNDERFUNDED
3
3
AFFIRMATIVE FILE
A/T: PENSIONS ARE UNDERFUNDED
(__) Pension underfunding is necessary to avoid negative effects associated with plans that are funded 100% or more.
Professor Jonathan Forman of the John Marshall School of Law4 writes:
when public pension plans get anywhere close

The only reason that anyone thinks that 80 percent funding may be “good enough for government” is that we all recognize that
to 100 percent funded, bad things happen. First, if a public plan is fully funded or overfunded, beneficiaries
will lobby for—and usually get—more generous benefits, thereby restoring the funded ratio from good to a bad, but
politically tolerable, underfunded level. In Oklahoma, for example, the state provides much of the funds for primary and secondary education. At the same time, the Oklahoma
Teachers’ Retirement System is only about 50 percent funded. Nevertheless, Oklahoma teachers spend most of their lobbying efforts trying to get pay increases—that almost invariably worsen the funded ratio. When
Oklahoma teachers do lobby about pensions, they usually just ask for ad hoc cost-of-living adjustments and other benefit enhancements; lobbying for larger government contributions to the underfunded pension plan is just
an afterthought.
The second bad thing that happens to fully funded or overfunded public pension plans is that governors and
legislatures call for contribution cuts and holidays. Politicians would rather spend money on projects that will
bring them more immediate campaign contributions and votes.
(__) Pension underfunding is not due to actions of public sector unions, but neoconservative interest groups like the
American Enterprise Institute5. David Webber of the New York University School of Law6 writes:
Likewise , in response to pressure from the American Enterprise Institute, among others, Republican Governor
Rick Perry of Texas ordered the state’s public pension funds to [liquidate] divest from companies doing business with Iran, requiring the
liquidation of positions the funds held in international energy conglomerates such as France’s Total and Great Britain’s
Royal Dutch Shell. The Texas funds’ divestment was a reaction to a broader campaign by AEI and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to highlight public pension funds’ purported indirect financing of
terrorism. And while this particular episode of business interests exercising influence over public pension funds postdates the timeframe of my lead plaintiff sample, I note that of the four Texas public pension funds that
appear on my Largest Funds list— the Teachers’ Retirement System of Texas ($77.8 billion in assets), the Employees’ Retirement System of Texas ($18.8 billion in assets), the Texas County and District Retirement
Democratic
System ($10.0 billion in assets), and the Texas Municipal Retirement System ($10.3 billion in assets)—none obtained a lead plaintiff appointment between 2003 and 2006. More recently,
Governor Steve Beshear of Kentucky invited the Kentucky Chamber of Commerce to participate in reforming
the investment practices of the state’s two major public pension funds, the Kentucky Teachers’ Retirement System and the Kentucky Retirement
Systems, including adding majorities of investment experts to the investment committees and reforming the
allocation of assets in the investment portfolio. The press release announcing the reforms prominently noted the participation of the Kentucky Chamber of Commerce, and
quoted its president and CEO, who stated, “We support the changes embodied in this proposal and applaud the governor's leadership on this issue.” The Kentucky Teachers’ Retirement System and the Kentucky
Retirement Systems are both Largest Funds with $12.1 billion and $12.4 billion in assets, respectively. As with the Texas funds, the Kentucky funds obtained no lead plaintiff appointments from 2003- 2006.
the examples above illustrate the

Setting aside the merits of this intervention by business interests in both the leadership and the investment decisions of public pension funds,
susceptibility of public pension funds to influence by business interests. Politicians who serve on public
pension fund boards are just as exposed to political pressure—including campaign contributions—from
business interests as they are from plaintiffs’ lawyers. Strong opposition to securities class actions by business interests may be reducing public pension fund participation in securities class actions,
particularly by politically dominated funds, and particularly in those states deemed to be highly sensitive to such interests, or insensitive to countervailing interests.135 The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, consistently one of
the nation’s largest campaign contributors, may take some comfort from this data that its contributions and lobbying efforts are having some effect in preventing public pension funds from leading shareholder lawsuits
against the Chamber’s members.
BBC Excerpt: “On Tuesdays, the leading neo-conservative think tank, the American Enterprise Institute, holds its
"black coffee morning", a relatively sumptuous breakfast and talks by key Iraqi exiles as well as luminaries like
Richard Perle, a leading hawk who is close to Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.”
4
Forman, Jonathan B. "Funding Public Pension Plans." The Seventh Annual Employee Benefits Symposium. John Marshall Law School, Chicago. 15 June 2009. Lecture.
5
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/2914969.stm
6
Webber, David H. "Is “Pay-to-Play” Driving Public Pension Fund Activism In Securities Class Actions?: An Empirical Study." Law and Economics Research Paper Series 09.28 (2010). New York University School of Law. Web. 26
Apr. 2010.
4
AFFIRMATIVE FILE
A/T: PENSION UNDERFUNDING DESTROYING ECONOMY
(__) Since people aren’t withdrawing from their pensions all at once or in a significant amount, then pension
underfunding shouldn’t matter. But even if they were, the money that taxpayers deposit into the funds will go right
back into the economy since those pensioners will be spending that money as their retirement funds. Either way,
pension underfunding doesn’t have such a drastic effect on the economy.
7
5
AFFIRMATIVE FILE
A/T: PENSION UNDERFUNDING IS SINKING CALIFORNIA
(__) It isn’t solely the fault of public pension underfunding, but the state of California itself which is in massive
amounts of debt. There is a multitude of other factors involved. John Kilgour of the Compensation Benefits Review8
writes:
when related to the state’s population, budget or revenues it [pension

In absolute terms, a $47.9 billion in unfunded liabilities is a lot of money. However,
underfunding] is not as onerous as it looks at first glance (Exhibit 1). If OPEB liabilities [pensions] were the only problem facing
California, they would be a manageable. However, they are not. The state has substantial bonded and other
indebtedness and is currently facing a monumental budgetary crisis.
8
Kilgour, John C. "Public Sector Retiree Benefits in California: Problems and Solutions." Compensation Benefits Review 41.27 (2009). SAGE. Web. 27 Apr. 2010.
6
AFFIRMATIVE FILE
A/T: TEACHER UNIONS SUCK
(__) Larger unions are necessary to counter the big systems and accommodate for the large infrastructure necessary
for function. Cooper and Sureau write in the journal of Educational Policy9:
With national standards often come

Unions are part of the recent movement to create a national education system, with No Child Left Behind as the first major indicator.
universal testing; requirements for Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP); and a clearer, stronger alignment between the goals of education,
the curriculum, and the assessments in key subjects. Big systems require big unions, again a means of allaying fears
that teachers have of being swept away by national standards and reforms.
(__) Unions have given teachers a voice in policy making, which has been dominated by politicians in the past.
Cooper and Sureau write in the journal of Educational Policy10:
Similarly, as American public education has become larger and more standardized, the rise of the teacher labor movement in the 1930s was understandable in major urban centers, although it was not until the 1960s that
unions helped to
teachers—working with other public employees—got 32 states to start passing collective bargaining legislation. The great irony of teacher unionization, as we shall argue, is that these
institutionalize the teacher role, giving these professionals parity at the bargaining table and a greater voice in
school policy making and implementation. Unions, it seems, are ultimately at work to support and defend public
education, not to destroy it as many opponents of unionization and unions have been arguing since the 1850s when industrial labor began to grow. Now the question becomes, where and how can teachers’
unions help keep public education public—and slow down the charter school and voucher movements that create schools where collective bargaining is not as likely to occur?
(__) More education infrastructure funding leads to greater gross state product growth. Pantuosco and Ullrich write in
the Journal of Education Finance 11:
In a sample of 48
Government officials recognize that an educated workforce is a productive workforce. Quality public schools attract employers and yield a more productive society.
contiguous states, over a 14-year period, Garcia-Mila and McGuire (1992) discovered that state spending on
education infrastructure leads to improved GSP [Gross State Product] growth. With this outcome in mind, state policymakers search for the optimal
level of education spending, and the most efficient method of spending the educational budget. The allocation of tax revenue dedicated to education, whether
they spend on salaries or books, impacts the productivity of the workforce, and eventually the state's GSP.
(__) Organized teachers use their unions to create better schools. Pantuosco and Ullrich write in the Journal of
Education Finance12:
Our investigation overlaps at least two strands of literature—teachers unions' impact on productivity and the affect of labor unions on productivity. The impact of teacher's unions on productivity can be addressed through
the collective voice of organized teachers can

the literature known as the "two-faces" of (teachers) unions. The proposed positive face of unions highlights how
enhance the educational production function through their internal insight of student and school needs. With
the student in mind, organized teachers lobby for smaller class sizes, lucrative compensation packages to
attract and retain better quality teachers, and greater classroom resources of technology and supplies. The state hopes
their financial commitment to education will yield a harvest of productive citizens who contribute to society in measures of professionalism, social awareness, and diversification, and, we propose, a greater gross state
product per employee.
(__) CHECK: A/T TEACHER SALARIES/BENEFITS TOO COSTLY
9
Cooper, Bruce S., and John Sureau. "Teacher Unions and the Politics of Fear in Labor Relations." Educational Policy 22.1 (2008). SAGE. Web. 7 Apr. 2010.
10
11
Ibid
12
Louis J. Pantuosco and Laura D. Ullrich. "The Impact of Teachers Unions on State-Level Productivity." Journal of Education Finance 35.3 (2010): 276-294. Project MUSE. 21 Feb. 2010 <http://muse.jhu.edu/>.
7
AFFIRMATIVE FILE
A/T: CAN’T FIRE TEACHERS
(__) Instead of unilateral action, cooperating with unions on firing bad teachers creates a productive environment for
actual reform. Martin Malin, a professor at the Chicago-Kent College of Law13, writes:
Peer review has been successful in large part because of teacher involvement through their unions in
developing the evaluation standards. Teachers are forced to reflect on what constitutes good teaching and express those
standards in terms that are accessible and acceptable to their peers. Having actively participated in developing the standards, the union is more
likely to view its role as protecting the standards of teaching instead of protecting individual teachers from evaluations
unilaterally imposed from above. Peer reviewers spend considerable greater time than administrators with the teachers under
review, and when reviews are negative, they generally produce a record that is very compelling. Although the teachers remain
contractually or statutorily entitled to union representation to challenge negative results, the thoroughness of the peer review record makes it unlikely that such challenged will succeed.
(__) Incorporating teacher unions into the firing process with peer review is more effective than unilateral action.
Martin Malin, a professor at the Chicago-Kent College of Law14, gives an empirical example:
When the union serves as a vehicle for collective employee voice in the evaluation and discipline of
employees, the union can be transformed from an impediment to effective government into a contributor. Such has
been the case with teacher peer review. One of the earliest and most notable examples of teacher peer review was in the Toledo,
Ohio Public Schools. The Toledo system employes an Internal Board of Review (IBR), consisting of five union and four district representatives. New teachers participate in a two-year intern program
with an IBR consulting teacher. The IBR also oversees a plan for tenured teachers whose substandard performance led to a joint referral by the teacher's principal and union building representative. Evidence
suggests that more probationary teachers and tenured teachers with performance problems leave the system
than under a system of review and discipline unilaterally controlled by management. A similar system in the
Cincinnati, Ohio Public Schools was examined by the Secretary of Labor's Task Force on Excellence in State and Local Government Through Labor-Management
Cooperation and found to have led to a greater percentage of probational teachers and teachers in remediation
leaving the system when reviewed by peers than when reviewed solely by administrators.
(__) Rates of dismissal of tenured teachers are the same between unionized and nonunionized states. California, a
state with a high rate of unionization, has a more stringent policy on probationary teachers. David Macaray15 writes:
In Georgia, where 92.5% of the teachers are non‐union, only 0.5% of tenured/post‐probationary teachers get
fired. In South Carolina, where 100% of the teachers are non‐union, it’s 0.32%. And in North Carolina, where 97.7% are non‐union, a miniscule .
03% of tenured/post‐probationary teachers get fired—the exact same percentage as California.
In California, with its “powerful” teachers’ union, school administrators fire, on average,
An even more startling comparison:
6.91% of its probationary teachers. In non‐union North Carolina, that figure is only 1.38%. California is
actually tougher on prospective candidates.
Fact: During the first two years of employment, any teacher in the LAUSD can be fired for any reason, with no
recourse to union representation and no access to the grievance procedure. Two full years. If the district doesn’t like
you for any reason, they fire you. No union. No grievance. Nothing. Could any arrangement be more favorable to
management?
13
Malin, Martin H. [Professor of Law and Director, Institute for Law and the Workplace, Chicago–Kent College of Law, Illinois Institute of Technology.] "The Paradox of Public Sector Labor Law." Indiana Law Journal 84 (2009).
Springer. Web. 16 Apr. 2010.
14
Ibid
15
David Macaray [Los Angeles Playwright, Writer, and Former Labor Union Representative]. “The Myth of the ‘Powerful’ Teachers’ Union.” CounterPunch. March 20‐22, 2009. Accessed April 2, 2010.
8
AFFIRMATIVE FILE
A/T: TEACHER SALARIES/BENEFITS TOO COSTLY
(__) Teachers don’t receive social security benefits, and already have a low middle class income. Unions have
significantly improved the living conditions from low pay and no benefits to a decent income with deserved health
and pension benefits. Large pensions are also deserved since teachers often spend decades in their jobs.
(__) As teachers are compensated more for their efforts, they become more effective teachers. Pantuosco and Ullrich
write in the Journal of Education Finance16:
State and local governments dedicate a large percentage of their financial and human capital toward education.
In general, the pledge of resources is more pronounced in states where teachers unions thrive. In 2000, average per pupil spending was
over $7,500 in states where teachers unions were allowed to bargain. In states where unions do not have bargaining power, per pupil spending was only $6,450.1 Teachers unions espouse that higher
compensated, organized teachers better prepare students for the challenges incumbent on the modern workforce. They rationalize that in
return for the states' investment in schools, the union will help produce a well-rounded, socially informed
student who makes a positive contribution to society.
(__) More education infrastructure funding leads to greater gross state product growth. Pantuosco and Ullrich write in
the Journal of Education Finance 17:
In a sample of 48
Government officials recognize that an educated workforce is a productive workforce. Quality public schools attract employers and yield a more productive society.
contiguous states, over a 14-year period, Garcia-Mila and McGuire (1992) discovered that state spending on
education infrastructure leads to improved GSP [Gross State Product] growth. With this outcome in mind, state policymakers search for the optimal
level of education spending, and the most efficient method of spending the educational budget. The allocation of tax revenue dedicated to education, whether
they spend on salaries or books, impacts the productivity of the workforce, and eventually the state's GSP.
(__) Compared with third-world countries, non-unionized teachers in the US have worse benefits, especially with
maternity leave. According to a UN Commission report18:
Industrialized Length of Percentage of wages

Nations Maternity paid in covered period
Denmark Leave 100
Hungary 18 weeks 100
Spain 24 weeks 100
United Kingdom 16 weeks 90 for 6 weeks, flat rate thereafter
United States 14-18 weeks 0
12 weeks
Africa
Angola 90 days 100
Cote d'Ivoire 14 weeks 100
Kenya 2 months 100
South Arica 12 weeks 45
16
17
Ibid
18
http://unstats.un.org/unsd/demographic/products/indwm/wwpub2000.htm
9
AFFIRMATIVE FILE
A/T: QUALITY OF SCHOOLS DECLINING
(__) Organized teachers use their unions to create better schools. Pantuosco and Ullrich write in the Journal of
Education Finance19:
Our investigation overlaps at least two strands of literature—teachers unions' impact on productivity and the affect of labor unions on productivity. The impact of teacher's unions on productivity can be addressed through
the collective voice of organized teachers can

the literature known as the "two-faces" of (teachers) unions. The proposed positive face of unions highlights how
enhance the educational production function through their internal insight of student and school needs. With
the student in mind, organized teachers lobby for smaller class sizes, lucrative compensation packages to
attract and retain better quality teachers, and greater classroom resources of technology and supplies. The state hopes
their financial commitment to education will yield a harvest of productive citizens who contribute to society in measures of professionalism, social awareness, and diversification, and, we propose, a greater gross state
product per employee.
(__) A litany of studies20 have shown that teacher unions have increased performance in schools:
, Eberts and Stone (1987) claim the decline of test scores would be worse without the teachers'
While this result sounds disheartening
unions.9 They posit that unionized districts are seven percent more productive for average students than non-union
districts. Freeman and Medoff (1979) explain that teachers unions improve productivity by inspiring higher
wages that maintain and attract faculty. Stone (2000) calculates that teachers unions improve teacher salaries by
5.1% over non-unionized teachers of comparable education and experience.10 Other researchers add that unions champion
smaller class sizes, and that these smaller classes benefit students. They reference the four-year longitudinal Student Teacher Achievement Ratio (STAR)
project which shows average per pupil performance increases when class size is diminished.11 The National Education Association (NEA) concurs that the
unions' objective to limit class sizes and lobby for state-of-the-art resources improves students' educational
experience.
19
20
Ibid
10
AFFIRMATIVE FILE
A/T: TEACHER UNIONS KILL CHARTER SCHOOLS
(__) Teacher unions have actually been opening charter schools. Cooper and Sureau write in the journal of
Educational Policy21:
the New York City local of the United Federation of Teachers opened its own
Recently, to be involved in this form of privatization,
charter school, unique in that teachers in this school also were members of the UFT. If you can’t beat them,
join them. The advertisement is for two schools: elementary and secondary. The following is an account of the UFT president welcoming staff and students into the nation’s first teacher union-run charter:
(__) The environment of the union is more conducive for charter schools…teachers cooperate…share information…
21
11
AFFIRMATIVE FILE
A/T: CHARTER SCHOOLS GOOD
(__) Charter schools need vast improvement and are not regulated enough. The IBISWorld Industry Report22 writes:
the Center for Education Reform is positive

Despite some charter schools popularity and success there is still much debate about the quality, performance and merit of the schools. Although
believes that charter school laws need strengthening. Of the 40 states that have charter school laws, 20 states have
about the growth in Charter Schools, it
weak laws [regulating charter schools], and are in need of improvement. According to the New York Times (June
2006), in a recent survey of public institutions and charter schools, in many instances charter schools were found to
have performed worse than the traditional public school. This has raised concerns regarding the charter schools
as a solution to some of the public school systems problems. President Obama has promised to double the funding for "responsible" charter schools.
(__) Charter schools have not improved in performance over public schools and there are greater accountability
issues. The IBISWorld Industry Report23 writes:
There are however some issues surrounding charter schools. According to the New York Times (October 2006), a federal study into school
performance found that charter schools did not perform better than traditional public schools, and in some
instances their performance was worse. It can also be difficult to close charter schools for political reasons.
President Obama has stated that he intends to hold poorly performing charter schools accountable, although how [accountability] this will be achieved is unclear.
22
IBISWorld. "Public Schools in the US." IBISWorld Industry Report. 12 Feb. 2010. Web. 25 Mar. 2010.
23
Ibid
12
AFFIRMATIVE FILE
A/T: US EDUCATION DECLINING IN COMPETITVENESS
(__) The US only appears to be declining. Education in the US is compulsory while only the privileged and intelligent
are able to receive educations in countries such as India. David Macaray24, a labor union representative, writes:
Also, comparing the scores of American students in foreign countries is a bit misleading. The United States was not only the first nation
in the world to offer free public education, it was the first to make it compulsory. In the U.S., by law, you must attend school until at least age 16 (some
states have even higher age requirements). That means our national average is going to incorporate test scores of every kid from
every background in every neighborhood in the country. In India (where I once lived and worked), great emphasis is placed on education; accordingly,
India has a decent school system, one that scores well. But school attendance is not mandatory. Indeed, India has 400 million people who
are illiterate. One wonders what their national test scores would be if those many millions who can’t read or write were factored in.
(__) In some nations like China, you must take tests to be admitted into middle school, high school, and college.
Those who fail these extensive exams are not permitted entry and thus their scores are not taken into account.
24
David Macaray, The Myth of the Powerful Teachers’ Union, March 20-22, 2009, http://www.counterpunch.org/macaray03202009.html
13
AFFIRMATIVE FILE
A/T: TEACHER UNIONS BLOCK REFORM
(__) Teacher unions support reform. Princeton University25 writes:
A recent Op-Ed in the New York Times and a Boston news radio program covered Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of
Teachers (AFT), and her proposal for how the union can evaluate teachers more thoroughly. She addressed topics sensitive among many teachers – the
use of student performance as a factor in evaluations and the procedures to remove teachers who are
ineffective or guilty of misconduct. Breaking with precedent, Weingarten favors using student test scores to assess
teachers and agrees that steps to remove ineffective teachers should be eased The AFT’s support for these
reforms is a positive step in a complicated process. An article in The Future of Children volume Excellence in the Classroom focuses on the role of teachers, and it argues
that unions, school administrators, and policymakers should work together to reform school systems. “Reform bargaining” has gained traction in recent years,
with the support of both AFT and another major union, the National Education Association (NEA).
(__) The American Federation of Teachers has backed reform. The USAToday26 writes:
The American Federation of Teachers, the USA's second-largest teachers union, plans to announce today it
will put up $1 million and seek additional philanthropic funding to help school systems try "sustainable, innovative
and collaborative reform projects" developed by AFT teachers over the past several years AFT has more than 1.4 million members; about half currently work
in schools. Randi Weingarten, the union's new president, says the fund will support teacher-generated efforts. "That's
something that has been totally absent" from most big school shake-ups, she says. "Ultimately, teachers have to have a real stake in reform. It's not simply about a charismatic leader or one idea. We know what
works from the ground up, and if teachers would just have a voice in the reform, we would be able to make it work."
(__) Collective bargaining agreements actually permit reform. The Center for Reinventing Public Education27 writes:
On one hand, collective bargaining agreements (CBAs)—long, complex, and unwieldy documents which can be difficult for an overworked principal to navigate—are often perceived as obstacles by many principals and
other educators, and to a certain extent this perception becomes reality. And, while these perceptions can limit school-level flexibility and autonomy, there are also restrictive provisions within CBAs that do so as well. On
CBAs tend to have waiver provisions. In many cases, districts and teachers unions can also negotiate
the other hand,
side agreements on individual issues (e.g., memoranda of understanding, or MOUs) to provide desired flexibility. And, in perhaps our most significant finding, many of the
CBA provisions that we analyzed were more flexible than educators and reform advocates often suggest. Finally,
many CBA provisions that we studied were simply ambiguous. This ambiguity could potentially allow for greater latitude for an aggressive principal who is looking
for more flexibility and willing to push the envelope, while serving to limit a more cautious or timid principal who looks to the CBA for explicit authority or permission
first before acting.
(__) Waiver provisions are flexible. The Center for Reinventing Public Education28 writes:
The basic question that we asked in this study is: Are teachers unions and collective bargaining agreements barriers to high school reform and redesign efforts in Washington, California, and Ohio? Based on our analysis of
many educators perceive the

the contracts that we studied, our answer is: sometimes, but not as often as many educators and union critics seem to think. On one hand, as detailed in this report,
complex and unwieldy contracts as barriers to reform, and often this perception becomes reality. And while perceptions can
limit school-level flexibility and autonomy, the CBAs that we studied contain actual provisions that do so as well. On the other hand, flexibility is available in the form
of waiver provisions and side agreements. And, in perhaps our most significant finding, many contract provisions in our sample
proved to be more flexible than educators, reform advocates, and critics often suggest. Finally, often the
contract language is simply ambiguous; such ambiguity offers the potential for greater latitude for aggressive
or entrepreneurial principals, while serving to limit more cautious leaders.
25
Princeton-Brookings, The Future of Children, January 27, 2010, http://blogs.princeton.edu/futureofchildren/2010/01/accountability-from-teachers-union-can-spark-reform.html
26
USA Today, September 10, 2008, http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2008-09-10-aft-plan_N.htm
27
Center for Reinventing Public Education, Teachers Union Contracts and High School Reform, 2009, http://www.crpe.org/cs/crpe/view/csr_pubs/261
28
Ibid
14
AFFIRMATIVE FILE
A/T: UNIONS BLOCK MERIT PAY
(__) Teacher unions have embraced merit pay. Randall Eberts of the Woodrow Wilson Foundation29 writes:
Denver, probably more than any other school district to date, has pursued an ambitious pay-for-performance
experiment. Ironically, in 1921 Denver became the first school district to replace a merit pay approach with a single salary schedule based on seniority. Seventy-eight years later the district administration and
teachers association agreed on a two-year pilot that would base teachers' pay in part directly on the achievement of their students. As described by Donald Gratz, who was in charge of evaluating the Denver
Incentive Program, the pilot provided small bonuses for teachers who met either one or two student achievement objectives that they themselves chose.56 These objectives had to be
approved by their principals. For each objective met, teachers received $750. For a school to join the pilot, 85
percent of its faculty had to vote for participation. Thirteen schools signed up.
The Denver Teachers Association had opposed the new compensation system as initially proposed but, wishing to avoid continued confrontation with the administration, agreed after winning three important concessions.
One was that teachers' performance would be based on objectives of their own choice, with approval of their principals. Another was that an outside, objective party would evaluate the effectiveness of the pilot. The third
was that the final plan would be subject to a general vote of the association's members. By the time the system was brought to a vote and approved in 2004, it had been modified extensively. The approved system included
four components. Compensation was based on student growth objectives; on earned professional development units, including advanced degrees; and on two bonuses, one for serving in hard-to-staff assignments and the
other for serving in hard-to-serve schools.
(__) Teacher unions have embraced Obama’s plan for merit pay. The Wall Street Journal30 writes:
President Barack Obama laid out a broad education vision Tuesday that includes expanded merit pay for teachers
and more charter schools, ideas long troubling to teachers' unions. With his congressional agenda already packed, the president is not proposing a major new piece of legislation. Instead, he
spelled out the goal of a "cradle to career" education system aimed at serving Americans better at every level. He said he would use the budget to expand programs that work and encourage voluntary action by states and
individuals.
The president's plan, which largely implements promises from his campaign, includes new incentives for states to boost the quality of
preschool programs and easier access to financial aid for higher education. Mr. Obama also called on states to
raise standards for student achievement. Perhaps the most controversial step would increase the number of school districts that benefit from a federal program that supports
performance pay for teachers. Mr. Obama also called on states to remove caps on the number of public charter schools. Twenty-six states and the District of Columbia now cap the total, according to the National Alliance
for Public Charter Schools. The president cast his proposals as an effort to move past the debates that have dominated education policy in the past. "Too many supporters of my party have resisted the idea of rewarding
excellence in teaching with extra pay, even though we know it can make a difference in the classroom," he told the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. "Too many in the Republican Party have opposed new investments
in early education, despite compelling evidence of its importance." Mr. Obama's support for merit pay breaks with some in his party, who fear it can't be administered fairly. The Teacher Incentive Fund currently supports
34 grant recipients at a cost of $97 million this year and another $200 million was allocated through the economic-stimulus plan. Mr. Obama said he'd like to see as many as 150 districts added, but the administration did
not say what its 2010 budget request will be. "It's time to start rewarding good teachers, stop making excuses for bad ones," Mr. Obama said. "If a teacher is given a chance or two chances or three chances but still does not
Obama said that teachers who are rewarded for excellence should help their
improve, there's no excuse for that person to continue teaching." Mr.
schools improve. Teacher unions said Tuesday that they welcomed Mr. Obama's overall approach and could support
merit-pay plans as long as they are fair to teachers. The presidents of the two largest teachers' unions said they
were confident Mr. Obama would only support proposals that meet that test.
29
Eberts, Randall W. “Teacher Unions and Student Performance: Help or Hindrance?” The Future of Children. 2007. Project MUSE. (Published by The Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton
University and The Brookings Institution.)
30
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123668036405881929.html Laura Meckler March 11, 2009
15
AFFIRMATIVE FILE
MERIT PAY BAD
(__) teachers will game the merit pay system by forcing students to drop out. David Figlio, and Lawrence Getzler, of
the National Bureau of Economic Research write:
a Virginia school district superintendent said that the state’s

Schools may even be less inclined to discourage poorer students from dropping out. For example,
accountability exam system “actually encourages higher dropout rates … It is actually to the school’s advantage to
drop slow learners and borderline students from the school, because they are usually poor test-takers.” (Borja, 1999) In part
because of the newness of school accountability systems, we know of few attempts to seriously quantify school responses to these incentives.1
(__) Gains in performance may not correlate with student improvement or better teacher instruction. Thomas Kane,
from the National Bureau of Economic Research, writes in March 2001:
The estimation technique we use to decompose the variance in school-level test scores also yielded a number of substantive implications. First, one must be cautious in using gain scores in an accountability framework, whether
Moreover, the gain any

one is evaluating schools or teachers. There is much less signal variation and relatively more variation due to non-persistent factors in gain scores than in test score levels.
teacher is likely to achieve with his or her students seems to depend upon the quality of instruction provided in the
previous year. Large (or small) gains one year tend to be followed by small (or large) gains in the next year. Also, the
schools that achieve impressive gains in one grade may not achieve impressive gains in other grades. In other words, one
should not evaluate a school based upon the gains in any particular grade level. Although gain scores are often touted as better indicators of “value-
added” by a school, their usefulness will be quite limited without the filtering technique we propose.
He continues:
Second, we found little evidence that schools with substantial improvements in test performance over time improved
on any measures of student engagement. Although homework and TV watching were strongly related to math test score gains in 5th grade in the base year (1994), there was
no evidence that the schools with the greatest improvements in performance after 1994 exhibited improvement on any of
these other dimensions. Such results would be consistent with the hypothesis that schools began tailoring their
curricula to improve performance on the tests, without generating similar improvements on other measures.
If student performance bears little relation to a current teacher’s efficacy or even real educational improvement, then
we should not give out merit pay simply because merit has not been earned even when it appears to have been.
16
AFFIRMATIVE FILE
PRIVATIZATION/VOUCHERS BAD
(__) Supreme Court Justice Souter vehemently opposes vouchers since they are a vehicle for undermining the
Constitution. CNN reports31:
"Public tax money will pay at a systemic level for teaching the covenant with Israel and Mosaic law in Jewish schools, the
primacy of the Apostle Peter and the Papacy in Catholic schools, the truth of reformed Christianity in
Protestant schools, and the revelation to the Prophet in Muslim schools, to speak only of major religious
groupings in the Republic," he said.
(__) In Cleveland, almost all families using vouchers sent their children to Catholic schools. CNN reports32:
nearly all the families receiving the tax-supported state tuition

The ruling reverses an appeals court decision, which struck down the program because
scholarships attend Catholic schools in Cleveland.
(__) Private schools are discriminatory and give up on students. The Anti-Defamation League writes33:
Private schools are allowed to discriminate on a variety of grounds. These institutions regularly reject
applicants because of low achievement, discipline problems, and sometimes for no reason at all. Further, some
private schools promote agendas antithetical to the American ideal. Under a system of vouchers, it may be difficult to
prevent schools run by extremist groups like the Nation of Islam or the Ku Klux Klan from receiving public funds to subsidize their racist and anti-
Semitic agendas. Indeed, the proud legacy of Brown v. Board of Education may be tossed away as tax dollars are siphoned off to deliberately segregated schools.
(__) Vouchers are not effective at subsidizing private school costs. (Isidore Neuman costs $20,000 to attend). The
Anti-Defamation League writes34:
Proponents of vouchers argue that these programs would allow poor students to attend good schools
previously only available to the middle class. The facts tell a different story. A $2,500 voucher supplement may
make the difference for some families, giving them just enough to cover the tuition at a private school (with some schools charging over $10,000 per year, they would still have to pay several thousand dollars). But voucher
programs offer nothing of value to families who cannot come up with the rest of the money to cover tuition costs.
(__) States such as Iowa have open enrollment policies, enabling students to transfer to schools with better resources
than the school districts that their families may be living in.
31
Frieden, Terry. "Supreme Court Affirms School Voucher Program - June 27, 2002." CNN.com. Time Warner, 27 June 2002. Web. 29 Apr. 2010.
32
Ibid
33
Anti Defamation League. "School Vouchers: The Wrong Choice for Public Education." ADL. Web. 29 Apr. 2010.
34
Ibid
17
AFFIRMATIVE FILE
A/T: ARGUMENTS MUST ONLY BE PUBLIC SECTOR UNIONS
(__) The same unions represent public and private sector workers. Norma Riccucci writes in the Review of Public
Personnel Management35:
the Service Employees International Union (SEIU)—originally chartered as the “Building Service Employees International Union” by the AFL
In addition,
in 1921 to represent such private sector workers as janitors, elevator operators, and security guards—also represents a high percentage of
public employees (16.4%). The SEIU is the largest and fastest growing union in North America, and it is the
nation’s largest union of health care workers (Service Employees International Union [SEIU], 2005).
As seen in Table 2, traditionally private sector unions such as the Teamsters (IBT), the United Auto Workers (UAW), and the
Communications Workers of America (CWA) also are representing a growing number of public employees. Although
the IBT, for example, only represents 2% of public employees, it is the type of worker that the union represents, which indicates the breadth of private section representation. The IBT represents not
only police, fire, and corrections officers but also nurses, court officers, architects, clerical and nonsupervisory
university workers, and general state workers and administrators.
Finally, as seen in Table 2,traditional teachers’ unions such as the National Education Association (NEA) and the American
Federation of Teachers (AFT) represent close to 25% of state and local government employees. The NEA’s and
AFT’s constituents here are not teachers but rather white-collar county workers, general unit workers in such
departments as Parks and Recreation, and other types of general municipal employees. In addition, the NEA, which historically has been seen as the
“professional” counterpart to the AFT, represents such workers as school cafeteria employees.
Table 3 provides data on union membership of teachers and professors. It is not surprising to note, the preponderance of these employees at public institutions is represented by the NEA or the AFT (67%). However, the
Historically private sector unions such as the Teamsters, the UAW, and
array of other unions representing teachers and professors is quite interesting.
the Transport Workers Union (TWU) account for close to 10% of union membership by teachers and professors.
The SEIU, CWA, and AFSCME represent about 25% of the teachers and professors at public schools and universities
throughout the nation. Finally, the Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) and police and fire unions—including the FOP, the
International Association of Fire Fighters (IAFF), and the Police Benevolent Association (PBA)—are now
representing teachers and professors.
(__) This is logically not true. Evidence about unions in general clearly applies to public sector unions. All of the
properties of a rectangle are exhibited by a square, even if squares are just a type of rectangle.
35
Riccucci, Norma M. "The Changing Face of Public Employee Unionism." Review of Public Personnel Administration 27.71 (2007). SAGE. Web. 6 Apr. 2010.
36
Ibid
37
Ibid
18
AFFIRMATIVE FILE
A/T: PUBLIC SECTOR UNIONS INCREASE DEFICIT SPENDING
(__) Public employees are more aware of their costs and how they affect their organization, leading to greater cost-
savings and efficiency. Brendan Martin writes in the Review of Labor and Research38:
when a decision has been taken to setup a project in a workplace, all the employees are
Under the Komanco approach,
informed and then divided up into groups of between 8 and 12 people, each with an appointed leader. Then the groups spend as long as 10
months analysing their organisation, identifying its strengths and weaknesses and finding ways to build on the
former and eradicate the latter. Komanco’s brochure stresses that ‘creativity needs elbow room’ and that ‘work for change takes time’. Almqvist explains:
The members become researchers in their own jobs. They discuss how to improve quality, where responsibility lies and should lie,
what are their training needs. They measure the costs of specific tasks, so that each person knows the costs associated with
their own job.
(__) Look as investment as opposed to a one-time cost. Wage increases mean money goes back to local communities.
(__) Everything we do is deficit spending at some point, so there isn’t a clear line showing how public sector unions
are the tipping point of public sector unions.
38
Martin, Brendan. "Delivering the goods - trade unions and public sector reform." Review of Labour and Research 3.14 (1997): 14-33. Print.
19
AFFIRMATIVE FILE
A/T: PUBLIC SECTOR UNIONS INCREASE TAXES
(__) We shouldn’t conflate the issue of public workers’ wages and pork barrel spending. Whereas our tax dollars go
directly to helping a family make ends meet for public sector workers, politicians and their special interest send
millions more to projects like bridges to nowhere and unnecessary fighter jets.
(__) There is no negative effect of collective bargaining since voters drive down wages through initiatives while
collective bargaining increases employment. There would actually be a negative effect without collective bargaining
since we wouldn’t create job demands necessary to help the economy or maintain proper employment. John
Matsusaka of the University of Southern California39 writes:
The main message of this paper is that municipal employment policies are different when voters can override elected officials via initiatives, and the differences are consistent with a theory in which initiatives counteract
When collective bargaining is unavailable, the initiative mainly cuts

political economy problems stemming from patronage and interest groups.
employment, consistent with a model in which elected officials tend to pad the public payroll with patronage workers. When collective bargaining is available, the
initiative mainly cuts wages, consistent with a model in which voters use the initiative to undo supra-market
wages that emerge from collective bargaining. The initiative is also associated with smaller employment cuts
when collective bargaining is available than when it is unavailable. This pattern is consistent with the model because higher union wages cause elected officials to cut public sector
employment on their own, reducing the need for initiatives to roll back patronage jobs.
39
Matsusaka, John G. "Direct Democracy and Public Employees." SSRN. University of Southern California. May 2007. Accessed April, 28 2010.
20
AFFIRMATIVE FILE
A/T: UNIONS BLOCK VOLUNTEERISM
(__) This is just hawkish overregulation that happens once in a blue moon. Our opponents do not provide that public
sector unions are a systemic threat to public volunteerism. Community projects happen every day without events like
these happening.
21
AFFIRMATIVE FILE
A/T: UNIONS LEAD TO POLITICAL CORRUPTION
(__) A joint study40 by the University of Illinois, Rutgers University, Cornell University, and the University of Oregon
covering six years of union activity found absolutely no misconduct of unions.
from 2003-2009 in the states studied, a total of 34,148 public sector workers employed in state, county,
In brief,
municipal and educational institutions voluntarily joined a union. Most importantly, contrary to business claims, in
1,073 cases of union certification and in at least 1,359 majority-authorization campaigns, there was not a
single confirmed incident of union misconduct.
(__) We should evaluate actions of unions as a collective force. Insofar as these allegations of corruption come from
only so-called union leaders, they are not the entirety of the union, and only the actions of a single individual.
40
Joint Research Project of the University of Illinois School of Labor and Employment Relations, Department of Labor Studies and Employment Relations, Rutgers University Extension Division, School of Industrial and Labor
Relations, Cornell University, University of Oregon Labor Education and Research Center “Majority Authorizations and Union Organizing in the Public Sector: A Four-State Perspective” May 26, 2009
22
AFFIRMATIVE FILE
A/T: WORKERS FORCED TO JOIN UNIONS
(__) A joint study41 by the University of Illinois, Rutgers University, Cornell University, and the University of Oregon
covering six years of union activity found absolutely no misconduct of unions.
from 2003-2009 in the states studied, a total of 34,148 public sector workers employed in state, county,
In brief,
municipal and educational institutions voluntarily joined a union. Most importantly, contrary to business claims, in
1,073 cases of union certification and in at least 1,359 majority-authorization campaigns, there was not a
single confirmed incident of union misconduct.
41
Joint Research Project of the University of Illinois School of Labor and Employment Relations, Department of Labor Studies and Employment Relations, Rutgers University Extension Division, School of Industrial and Labor
Relations, Cornell University, University of Oregon Labor Education and Research Center “Majority Authorizations and Union Organizing in the Public Sector: A Four-State Perspective” May 26, 2009
23
AFFIRMATIVE FILE
A/T: UNIONS ENTRENCH DISCRIMINATION
(__) Without unions to protect workers, labor rights have been exploited; particularly those of women and minorities.
Wade Henderson, a professor of public interest law42, writes:
By exploiting weaknesses in our labor laws that

Over the past four decades, employers have, with increasing aggressiveness, sought to keep unions out of the American workplace.
allow businesses to coerce workers with virtual impunity, employers have made a mockery of the right to form a union.
As a result, workers have endured rising income inequality and diminished rights and dignity in the
workplace. Today I would like to focus on the particularly strong negative impact the decline of our labor movement and our inadequate labor laws have on women and minorities in the workplace. LCCR co-
founder A. Philip Randolph, the longtime leader of the African- American Sleeping Car Porters union, embodied the idea that a broad pro-worker agenda, with a strong labor movement as its cornerstone, was essential to
promoting racial equality in our nation. Following in Randolph's footsteps, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., when he marched in support of striking Memphis sanitation workers, recognized that it was not racial prejudice
alone, but the joint effects of racial discrimination and economic privation that denied economic opportunity to poor African-American workers. As King realized, unions hold forth the promise of bringing us closer to a
Unions markedly improve wages and benefits for those trapped at the bottom of
society where all Americans enjoy economic opportunity.
the economic ladder, who disproportionately are women and minorities. They also make workplaces fairer and
more humane through the enforcement of contract provisions addressing issues like sick leave and workplace
safety - measures which help all workers but are of particular benefit to women and minorities. Moreover, one of the twentieth century's great champions of civil and human rights in our nation, Eleanor Roosevelt,
recognized that the right to organize was instrumental to securing human rights domestically and globally. Roosevelt led the efforts to draft the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which laid the foundation for
.
international human rights standards. The Declaration states that "[e]veryone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests." Women and minorities need unions now more than ever
The current economic downturn is a particularly strong threat to low wage workers. Indeed, whatever modest economic gains women and
minority workers have garnered in recent decades may be wiped out if they are unable to push back against wage and benefit cuts and to fight for better job security. The Employee Free Choice Act, a bill to be introduced
soon in the 111th Congress, presents the best opportunity in a generation to restore workers' right to unionize. If we do not bring fairness back to the process by which workers form a union, we will lose perhaps our best
chance to preserve recent economic gains for women and minorities, and to give them a better path to economic prosperity for themselves and their children.
(__) Unions like the American Federation of Teachers worked to ensure equal rights during the Civil Rights
Movement43.
AFT conventions as early as 1928 passed resolutions to call attention to the need for more black history in
schools and for the equalization of salaries between black and white teachers. And 10 years later, the 1938 AFT convention, which was planned
for a Cincinnati hotel, was moved to a new location because blacks would have been forced to use freight elevators in the hotel.
One of the earliest unions to condemn segregation, the AFT stopped chartering segregated locals in 1948 and
later formalized that action through a constitutional amendment. The federation also willingly accepted the loss of thousands of members in 1957 when it
expelled its remaining segregated locals in the South.
The AFT was virtually alone among teacher organizations in filing an amicus curiae brief supporting the plaintiffs in the
landmark 1954 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education that struck down racial segregation of schools. In its brief filed
two years before the decision, the AFT's legal counsel John Ligtenberg wrote, "Segregation in the field of education is the denial of education itself." (see Brown vs. Board of Education: A Proud AFT Moment)
During the turbulent 1960s, the AFT was particularly active on the civil rights front. Busloads of members
traveled to the South for voter registration drives as well as to participate in the historic 1963 March on
Washington. The AFT also ran more than 20 "Freedom Schools" in Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia and Florida. Staffed by AFT volunteers the schools supplemented the inadequate education offered to black
students.
42
Wade Henderson, President, Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, professor, public interest law, March 10, 2009, Testimony, p. online
43
http://archive.aft.org/topics/civil-rights/index.htm
24
AFFIRMATIVE FILE
A/T: UNIONS ARE MONOPOLIES
(__) By competing with private sector workers, public unions unite and become more efficient workers. Martin
Malin, a professor at the Chicago-Kent College of Law44, writes:
An alternative to public employers avoiding collectively represented employees by contracting their jobs to the private sector is to empower those
workers to compete against private contractors for the work. One example of such empowerment, highlighted by the
Secretary of Labor's Task Force, occurred in the Massachusetts Highway Department. When the state decided to subcontract
highway maintenance, the unions who represented the employees who had been performing those duties formed a coalition and bid against the
contractors. They were awarded the job and assumed responsibility for organizing and managing it. The
resulting improvements included a sixty percent reduction in workers' compensation claims, a seventy percent
reduction in overtime and a 49.5% reduction in sick time. Improved efficiency saved the state more than $7.8
million. Road sweeping and cleaning of gutters became more regular. Worker suggestions for improved
maintenance of equipment enabled the purchase and lease of new equipment. As with teacher peer review, the role of the union changed
dramatically. The Secretary of Labor's Task Force quoted one union official involved, "My job used to be to go around and ask people what grievances they had. My job is now to go around asking people what ideas they
have to improve this job."
(__) Unions achieve their goals outside of monopoly action, so thus they should not be interpreted as monopoly
actors. Richard Freeman, a researcher at the University of Chicago45, writes:
This study indicates that the extensive research on the effects of public sector unions should not be interpreted
within a “monopoly effects” model of unionism. Rather, in a sector of the economy with distinctive institutional features related to the budget-setting process,
unions achieve their objectives by influencing budget expenditures and not just levels of pay.
(__) Workers join public sector unions for voice and representation, not monopoly benefits. Morley Gunderson writes
in the Journal of Labor Research46:
Civil servants may not be allowed by statute, for

Restrictions on the range of issues that can be bargained for in the public sector may also redirect voice into other areas.
example, to bargain over wages or to strike (e.g., U.S. federal government). In such circumstances, unions may redirect their
attention to other areas, such as having a greater say in workplace issues. Freeman ( 1986:51 ) takes the high degree of unionization in the federal
government in spite of their inability to bargain over wages as evidence of the importance of the role of voice: "The high unionization in the federal sector thus
provides evidence for workers' desire for representation in a large bureaucratic organization, exclusive of the
'monopoly' power of unions to raise wages through collective bargaining." Of course, union voice in such circumstances can also be interpreted as
protecting the overall rents of which wages may be only one component.
(__) It doesn’t matter if unions don’t have competition in a specific company, since the union exists to represent the
workers as a whole. Multiple unions would defeat the purpose of forming unions to begin with.
(__) Having one [or multiple] really strong unions allows for more reform when it is needed, since more workers are
fighting for the cause and the union is more established, with clear goals and guidelines. More efficiency, etc
44
45
Freeman, Richard B., and Casey Ichniowski. National Bureau of Economic Research. Chicago: University of Chicago, 1988. Print.
46
Gunderson, Morley. "Two Faces of Union Voice in the Public Sector." Journal of Labor Research. XXVI.3. (2005) Springer. April 29, 2010.
25
AFFIRMATIVE FILE
A/T: PUBLIC SECTOR UNIONS ARE ANTIDEMOCRATIC
(__) The antidemocratic nature of the public sector union is a necessary evil. Martin Malin, a professor at the
Chicago-Kent College of Law47, writes:
Professor Clyde Summers, a

The view that public sector collective bargaining is antidemocratic is not confined to opponents of collective representation of public employees. For example,
leading academic proponent of public employee collective representation, accepts the argument as a given. He argues that the
antidemocratic nature of collective bargaining is justified because public employees need the special avenue of
access that collective bargaining gives them. Without it, he contends, public employees will be outnumbered in the
political process by the general electorate who, as consumers of the employees' services, will seek the most service for the lowest
price.
(__) Voter doesn’t know or understand the jobs at hand, and thus are the worst deciders for issues argued in collective
bargaining.
(__) There is no issue of democracy with public sector unions since those workers are not elected, but the officials
themselves. When it comes to issues with these workers, it should be treated as a business, since organizations like
schools and the postal office function as such. In that case, executive orders must be made in order for these groups to
be efficient.
(__) Public sector unions increase democracy by allowing workers to be represented and preventing the oppression of
those in the workforce, especially since the oppressor in this instance would be the government.
47
26
AFFIRMATIVE FILE
A/T: PUBLIC SECTOR WAGES TOO HIGH
(__) Public sector union wages are not overpaid compared to the private sector for multiple reasons. The USAToday48
writes:
Federal accountants, for example, perform

But National Treasury Employees Union President Colleen Kelley says the comparison is faulty because it "compares apples and oranges."
work that has more complexity and requires more skill than accounting work in the private sector, she says.
"When you look at the actual duties, you see that very few federal jobs align with those in the private sector,"
she says. She says federal employees are paid an average of 26% less than non‐federal workers doing comparable
work.
Office of Personnel Management spokeswoman Sedelta Verble, says higher pay also reflects the longevity and older age of federal workers.
(__) The reports comparing wage differences are flawed since they don’t take various factors into account. The
AFSCME49 writes:
the ALEC reports do not

The problem with the ALEC reports is that they try to lump apples and oranges together and end up skewing wage comparisons against public workers. Specifically,
account for the greater share of professional and technical occupations in the state and local government
workforce, which tend to be higher paid. Also, when actual job titles are matched up, rather than making overly broad comparisons or
averages, public sector jobs are often paid less than their private sector counterparts. Geographical differences also
matter, with there being greater variations in compensation between public and private sector wages in different cities around the
country, for example, than there is between public and private sector wages within a city.
48
Dennis Cauchon [Staff Writer]. “Federal Pay Ahead of Private Industry.” USA Today. March 4, 2010. Accessed March 5, 2010.
49
American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. "Getting It Right: Comparing State and Local Government Workers' Salaries with the Private Sector." AFSCME.org. No Date.
27
AFFIRMATIVE FILE
A/T: PUBLIC SECTOR BENEFITS TOO HIGH
(__) Benefits of public employees are not overly generous since they often stay at their jobs for a long period of time,
like teachers, and they do not receive other benefits such as social security. John Kilgour writes in the Compensation
Benefits Review50:
It must be
The remaining issue is that public sector pension benefits are overly generous. When compared to what has happened in the private sector, this point has considerable appeal.
remembered, however, that most public sector employees pay for a large portion of their retirement benefit and
that they tend to stay with their employer for a long time. Furthermore, many public sector employees,
especially teachers, police officers and firefighters, are not covered by Social Security. Their employers are
not subject to the 6.2% tax on payroll, and the employees do not get the Social Security retirement benefit
available to almost everyone else.
(__) Public sector benefits are comparable to those of private sector workers. The ASCFME51 writes:
public sector workers do not necessarily enjoy better benefits than those in comparable
In addition, this study finds that
private sector positions. Only a slightly greater percentage of state and local government workers are covered
by health insurance than workers in comparably sized private sector establishments. And state and local government workers
actually lag behind private workers when it comes to other benefits, like life insurance, disability, sick and
accidental insurance coverage. While a greater share of state and local government workers enjoy defined benefit pension coverage when compared to private sector employees, nearly
one‐third of all public employees are not eligible for Social Security and must rely solely on their pensions for
retirement benefits. Also, many state and local government workers' pensions are not protected to the same
degree as private sector pensions are.
Public employees have historically received more comprehensive health care and pension benefits than their private sector counterparts. Beyond these two benefits, however, public sector employees actually lag the
while private
private sector. While both the private and public sectors provide life insurance for roughly the same percentage of employees, the coverage is not always comparable. For example,
employers usually buy group life coverage that pays out a multiple of a deceased worker's salary, public
employers are more likely to provide a policy that pays a small lump sum. Additionally, public employees
have increasingly been moved into less costly HMOs and PPOs and are now required to pay for larger portions of their premiums. With these recent trends,
public employees find themselves with benefits comparable to those offered in the private sector.
Public employees have become targets for those wanting to justify tax cuts and public service reductions. If
public payrolls can be portrayed as "bloated," then cutting taxes is an obvious way to reduce them. If public employees are
protected, while their private sector counterparts are struggling in a competitive environment, then something must be wrong with government. Yet, these ideological myths cannot
be proven. When public workers are compared to private workers who perform essentially the same jobs, the
playing field is level. The only clear advantage many public workers may enjoy relative to the private sector is better pension coverage.
Given their lack of coverage under Social Security or other more generous benefits, it is not clear that this puts
public workers much further ahead than their private sector counterparts.
50
51
American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. "Getting It Right: Comparing State and Local Government Workers' Salaries with the Private Sector." AFSCME.org. No Date.
52
Ibid
53
Ibid
28
AFFIRMATIVE FILE
A/T: PUBLIC SECTOR UNIONS ENCUMBER GOVERNMENT
(__) Cooperating with unions, government has become more efficient. Martin Malin, a professor at the Chicago-Kent
College of Law54, writes:
giving employees, through their unions, an institutional voice in the initial decision making
There is good reason to believe that
will increase the likelihood that they will become agents of, instead of obstructions to, effective change.
Studies in the private sector show that when unions are strong and have a cooperative relationship with management,
they provide independent employee voice that plays a crucial role in the successful development and
sustenance of high performance workplace practices. These findings are consistent with the general social-psychology procedural justice literature which finds
positive outcomes associated generally with employee voice, that is, having an opportunity to be head concerning decisions that affect them, even
when the outcomes are not what the employees desired.
(__) Here are five examples of how public sector unions have increased government efficiency. Martin Malin, a
professor at the Chicago-Kent College of Law55, writes:
•Partnering between the Internal Revenue Service and the National Treasury Employees Union to modernize and restructure the IRS, resulting in measurable improvements in customer service and job satisfaction.
A partnership between American Federation of Government Employees Local 3973 and Defense Contract Management Command’s
Raytheon Missile Systems facility resulted in an overwhelming improvement in customer service ratings as
workload increased 100% and the workforce downsized, with $900,000 saved from the reduction in labor-
management litigation.
The U.S. Mint and the AFGE Mint Council engaged in joint strategic planning, resulting in the U.S. Mint’s
consistent ranking near the top of the American Customer Satisfaction Index and its production of record
numbers of coins and return of record profits to taxpayers.
• The Social Security Administration (SSA) and the AFGE partnership reengineered practices related to SSA’s toll free number, resulting in SSA outscoring all other organizations for 800 number customer satisfaction in
1995 and in a 1999 customer satisfaction rating of eighty-eight percent.
Partnerships between the James A. Haley Veterans’ Hospital and the AFGE Local 547, the Florida Nurses
Association, and the Tampa Professional Nurses Unit reduced delivery time for critical medication from
ninety-two minutes to twenty minutes, cut turnaround time for x-ray reports from eight days to one day, and
reduced processing time for pension and compensation exams from thirty-one days to eighteen days.
A National Treasury Employees Union and Customs Service partnership designed a seven-step strategy to
increase seizures of illegal drugs. During the six-month life of the joint action plan, narcotics seizures increased by forty-
two percent and drug currency seizures increased by seventy-four percent.
A partnership between the Defense Distribution Depot in San Joaquin and AFGE Local 1546 saved $950,000 per
year by reducing workplace accidents by twenty percent and ergonomic injuries by forty percent, reduced
overtime expenses from $9.8 million to $1.4 million, and reduced production costs from $25.42 per unit to
$23.48 per unit.
(__) CHECK A/T: UNIONS ARE MONOPOLIES
54
55
Ibid
29
AFFIRMATIVE FILE
A/T: CONTRACTORS MORE EFFICIENT
(__) Without unions, there is no political force pushing for regulation and accountability, enabling contractors to work
without any oversight. Richard Kearny writes in the Review of Public Personnel Administration56:
One of President Bush’s first official actions

The George W. Bush administration will probably go down in history as many things, including as one of the most antilabor of all.
on taking office was to revoke President Clinton’s Executive Order 12933, which mandated Labor–Management Partnerships in all
federal agencies. The President’s Office of Personnel Management and Office of Management and Budget pursued Bush’s “freedom to manage” doctrine
in attacking union rights, membership, and resources along a variety of fronts (Masters, 2004; Thompson, 2007), including an effort to hand
off some 425,000 federal civil service positions to firms (Tobias, 2004). As Bush and his cronies exited in January 2009, they left behind them for
the next administration a depleted, beaten down federal civil service that was less unionized than eight years before. In the words of public
administration scholar Paul Light (2008),
the appointment process is nasty, brutish and not at all short; departments
President Obama “is about to inherit a deeply dysfunctional government:
are clogged with red tape and reporting chains to nowhere; the civil service system fails at nearly every task it
undertakes; and contractors roam freely under the loosest oversight.”
56
Kearney, Richard C. "Public Sector Labor Management Relations: Change or Status Quo?" Review of Public Personnel Administration 30.1 (2010): 89-111. SAGE. Web. 7 Apr. 2010.
30
AFFIRMATIVE FILE
A/T: PUBLIC SECTOR UNIONS INCREASE GOVERNMENT
(__) CHECK A/T: CONTRACTORS MORE EFFICIENT
(__) It’s a necessary increase since these government workers deserve a voice in their workplace, and unions are the
most effective method of representing employee voice.
31
AFFIRMATIVE FILE
A/T: PUBLIC SECTOR UNION CAMPAIGN DONATIONS BAD
(__) Businesses and corporations outspend public sector unions in campaign contributions. Jack Fiorito writes in the
Journal of Labor Research57:
Overall political activity as indicated by the level of per-member PAC contributions remained relatively constant in inflation-adjusted terms (Masters and Delaney, 2005: 377), at less than $2 per member per biennial
election cycle (federal election campaigns only). The typical union member pays annual dues of roughly $400–500. Thus, despite the sometimes high profile of union political activities in popular media, traditional
union political spending has substantially lagged

characterizations of unions as relatively apolitical cannot be dismissed entirely. As a further point of reference,
growth in business-related political activity. In terms of PAC contributions to House and Senate candidates,
corporate PACs outspent labor PACs by a 1.4:1 ratio in 1979–1980, and by a 2.8:1 ratio in 2003–2004 (U.S. Census Bureau, 2006). Including
trade association PACs with corporate PACs would raise the figures to 2.6:1 and 4.4:1, respectively. Looking at broader indices, Masters and
Delaney estimated that business- affiliated groups and individuals outspent their union counterparts by roughly an 8:1
margin in both 1991–1992 and 2001–2002 election cycles (2005: 380).
57
Fiorito, Jack. "The State of Unions in the United States." Journal of Labor Research XXVIII.1 (2007). Springer. Web. 15 Apr. 2010.
32
AFFIRMATIVE FILE
A/T: PUBLIC SECTOR UNION LOBBYING BAD
(__) Private sector unions donate to political campaigns as well. This is not a trait unique to public sector unions.
(__) This isn’t a bad thing. Unions are allowed to show support for those candidates that they feel are best suited for
their needs. This is how our political system functions.
(__) Specific causal effects are necessary to get any impact from this argument. They need to give examples of how
union spending directly caused an unworthy candidate to win or a worthy candidate to lose (to an unworthy one).
(__) Causal effects in terms of election outcomes are impossible to prove. Tons of factors go into campaigns and
voting, the most important of which tend to be party lines and incumbency, not union support for a candidate.
(__) If members of the unions don’t approve of candidates that the union endorses, then they can choose not to be a
member of that particular union. By agreeing to join in the union, they are agreeing to spend resources on
campaigning.
33
AFFIRMATIVE FILE
A/T: PUBLIC SECTOR UNIONS INEFFICIENT
(__) Public employees participate in their work as a form of public service. Morely Gunderson writes in the Journal of
Labor Research58:
Voice can also be encouraged by loyalty--the third part of the exit-voice-loyalty trilogy, Loyal employees may use voice to improve the workplace and the institution to which they are committed out of loyalty.
Public sector employees may have entered "public service" in part out of loyalty to their clientele (as in the teaching, health
care, and "caring" professions in general). They may also have a stronger sense of public duty and civic responsibilities and have
entered public service in part since it provides the opportunity to "do good" (Reder, 1975: 28). All of these loyalty-related attributes may increase
the use of voice either directly (because loyalty fosters voice to improve the work environment) or indirectly (because loyalty reduces exit and hence increases the demand for voice).
(__) Public employees are more aware of their costs and how they affect their organization, leading to greater cost-
savings and efficiency. Brendan Martin writes in the Review of Labor and Research59:
when a decision has been taken to setup a project in a workplace, all the employees are
Under the Komanco approach,
informed and then divided up into groups of between 8 and 12 people, each with an appointed leader. Then the groups spend as long as 10
months analysing their organisation, identifying its strengths and weaknesses and finding ways to build on the
former and eradicate the latter. Komanco’s brochure stresses that ‘creativity needs elbow room’ and that ‘work for change takes time’. Almqvist explains:
The members become researchers in their own jobs. They discuss how to improve quality, where responsibility lies and should lie,
what are their training needs. They measure the costs of specific tasks, so that each person knows the costs associated with
their own job.
(__) CHECK A/T: PUBLIC SECTOR UNIONS ENCUMBER GOVERNMENT
(__) CHECK A/T: UNIONS ARE MONOPOLIES
58
Gunderson, Morley. “Two Faces of Union Voice in the Public Sector.” Journal of Labor Research XXVI.3 (2005). Springer-Velag. Web. 25 Mar 2010.
59
Martin, Brendan. "Delivering the goods - trade unions and public sector reform." Review of Labour and Research 3.14 (1997): 14-33. Print.
34
AFFIRMATIVE FILE
A/T: PRIVATIZATION GOOD
(__) Privatization of government services is merely a campaign to break unions and hinder workers’ rights. Jack
Fiorito writes in the Journal of Labor Research60:
Privatization was touted

Federal administrations under Reagan and both Bush presidencies launched various anti-union initiatives, always under the guise of a more positive public policy goal.
as making government services more efficient, but it also meant shifting workers to coverage under private
sector labor relations laws that seem less effective in protecting worker and union rights. In the name of efficient government
contracting, federal governments sought to weaken “prevailing wage” laws and project-wide union recognition agreements that help to limit incentives for private contractors to oppose unions in federally funded work
In the name of protecting individual worker rights, federal Attorneys General have been
(particularly on construction projects).
directed to promote notices to workers regarding their rights to refunds of union dues not spent on collective
bargaining (“Beck rights”), while putting no such priority on notice of worker rights to form or join unions.
(__) An empirical study by the Review of Public Personnel Administration has shown that there is no evidence to say
that private contractors are more efficient than public workers. Fernandez and Smith61 write:
Unions vigorously attack the presumption that contracting out will result in
Public sector unions oppose privatization on various fronts.
gains in efficiency, and recent research seems to buttress their case. While some experts have concluded that the evidence points to contracting out as
more efficient than in-house service delivery (e.g., Dilger, Moffett, & Struyk, 1997; Greene, 2002; Savas, 1987, 2000), others maintain that the evidence in more mixed and inconclusive (Brudney et al., 2005; Hodge,
meta-analysis of contracting studies yielded estimates of 6% to 12% savings through outsourcing; however, he found no general
2000; Sclar, 2000). Hodge’s (2000)
difference between cost savings through contracting with private providers and contracting with other public
agencies. Sclar (2000) asserted “although there are clear situations in which contracting works well, there are at least as many, if not more, in which the existence of direct public service is a rational economic
strategy” (p. 68). Even Greene (2002), who concluded that the evidence of efficiency is favorable toward privatizing municipal services, admonished that cost savings may often be less than reported, and that greater
efficiency is generally a result of competition rather than of private service delivery (pp. 49-50).
(__) Studies done on the private sector have been mixed and inaccurate. Pantuosco and Ullrich write:
Since Freeman and Medoff (1984) emphasized that "what unions do to productivity is one of the key factors in assessing the overall economic impact of unions," volumes of research have been dedicated to the empirical
Studies focusing on the impact of private sector unions on productivity have mixed results. While some studies reveal productivity
analysis of their observation.
gains from labor unions, others identify a negative productivity effect.17 The confusion between results stems from varying levels of aggregation,
price effects that distort perceived output effects, dispute over whether or not unions organize in more
productive firms, measures of productivity, and other factors that are difficult to control for across firms and
industries—such as wage effects.
60
Fiorito, Jack. "The State of Unions in the United States." Journal of Labor Research XXVIII.1 (2007). Springer. Web. 15 Apr. 2010.
61
Fernandez, Sergio, and Craig R. Smith. "Looking for Evidence of Public Employee Opposition to Privatization: An Empirical Study With Implications for Practice." Review of Public Personnel Administration 26.4 (2006): 356-81.
SAGE. Web. 7 Apr. 2010.
35
AFFIRMATIVE FILE
A/T: STEVEN GREENHUT
(__) Greenhut’s opposition to Keynesian economics, which included unions, stems from illogical relations to Hitler
and the Third Reich. Steven Greenhut writes in the Orange County Register62:
I pointed out a few weeks ago, namely,

There is much talk now about who compared Obama and Obama’s health care plans to policies in Nazi Germany but too little talk about something
that the prime and most prestigious advocate of the public policy of rescuing an economy by way of massive government or public spending–i.e., by way of government
administered stimulus, as it is question-beggingly called–John Maynard Keynes believed that the Third Reich would be a very
good place where his ideas could be implemented. Here is what I wrote:
62
Greenhut, Steven. "Dems Release Their Inner Totalitarian." The Orange County Register. Orange County Register Communications, 7 Aug. 2009. Web. 26 Mar. 2010.
36
AFFIRMATIVE FILE
A/T: POLICE STRIKES HARM SECURITY
(__) Strikes that lead to dangerous security holes are precisely why we need to have collective bargaining. Without a
medium to ensure adequate working conditions, wages, and benefits, we risk oppressing the very men and women
who risk their lives to serve the law.
(__) A study that reviewed FBI files regarding police strikes and crime has shown that there is no significant increase
in crime during police strikes. Erdwin Pfhul writes in the journal of Criminology63:
Employing FBI "Return A Record Card" data, this study examines the impact of municipal police strikes on reported rates of
[crime] burglary, robbery, larceny, and auto theft in 11 U.S. cities. Relationships reflecting the view that police presence is essential for
crime prevention and social order are examined for variation duration of police strike, city size, and offense category. Overall, analysis yields
very limited support for the police presence argument, suggesting that strikes have neither a significant nor a
systematic impact on rates of reported crime. Implications of findings for the formulation of police policy are discussed.
63
Pfuhl, Erdwin H. "Police Strikes and Conventional Crime: A Look at the Data." Criminology 21.4 (2006). Wiley InterScience. Web. 28 Apr. 2010.
37
AFFIRMATIVE FILE
A/T: TSA STRIKES HARM SECURITY
(__) Examples of strikes in other countries shouldn’t be considered as analogues to American culture. Our employees
in the TSA understand the tragedy of 9/11 in a visceral experience that workers in other nations or even other jobs
cannot comprehend. Security of the American people is the TSA’s first priority, not wage gains.
(__) Impacts are all speculative.
38
AFFIRMATIVE FILE
A/T: CAP AND TRADE BAD
(__) Cap and trade will actually benefit low-income families according to the Congressional Budget Office.
Politifact64 writes:
The Congressional Budget Office, the independent number-crunching group in Congress, has the newest study that analyzes the
specifics of the Waxman-Markey bill. It says the net annual economy wide cost of the cap-and-trade program in 2020 would be
$22 billion — or about $175 per household. It's important to read the fine print on this one, though. The CBO says the cost will vary depending on your wealth. Low-income consumers
could expect to save $40 a year, while high-income consumers will see a net cost for energy of $235 to $340 annually.
It's also important to note that the costs will vary year to year. CBO chose 2020 as a milestone for its analysis because it's a point at which the program would
have been in effect for eight years, giving the economy and polluters time to adjust. But had the CBO chosen a later date, the cost per family may have been higher because the government would gradually be charging
polluters more.
(__) There will be a minimal effect on employment, if any, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Politifact65
writes:
, the Congressional Budget Office issued a report in September 2009 that the cap-and-trade plan would
Meanwhile
have a minor effect on employment in the long-run.
"The small effect on overall employment would mask a significant shift in the composition of employment
over time," according to the report. "A cap-and-trade program for carbon dioxide emissions would reduce the number of jobs in industries that produce carbon-based energy, use energy intensively in their
production processes, or produce products whose use involves energy consumption, because those industries would experience the greatest increases in costs and declines in sales." But "the shifts in
demand caused by the policy would also create new employment opportunities in some industries."
(__) The EPA has already enacted successful cap and trade programs66:
Successful cap and trade

Cap and trade is an environmental policy tool that delivers results with a mandatory cap on emissions while providing sources flexibility in how they comply.
programs reward innovation, efficiency, and early action and provide strict environmental accountability
without inhibiting economic growth.
Examples of successful cap and trade programs include the nationwide Acid Rain Program and the regional
NOx Budget Trading Program in the Northeast. Additionally, EPA issued the Clean Air Interstate Rule (CAIR) on March 10, 2005, to build on the success of these programs
and achieve significant additional emission reductions.
64
Richert, Catharine. "Claims cap-and-trade will cause job losses." Politifact. October 5th, 2009. Accessed April 29, 2010.
65
Richert, Catharine. "Your guide to the cap-and-trade estimates." Politifact. June 25th, 2009. Accessed April 29, 2010.
66
http://www.epa.gov/capandtrade/
39
AFFIRMATIVE FILE
A/T: COLLECTIVE BARGAINING BAD
(__) Without collective bargaining, the state is susceptible to stagnant cash flow, which is harmful for economic
growth. Workers are coerced into conceding pay raises while money lays static in the treasury. Todd Dvorak writes in
the Indiana Law Journal67:
On December 11, 2008, Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels sent a letter to state employees. He thanked them for
their hard work in helping to make Indiana "strong and solvent," but informed them they would see no pay raises in 2009. 2 Later that day, the
Governor publicly warned that this move was "only the first and hardly the last of [his] hard decisions" that might affect state employees. 3 Conceding that workers would be
"disappointed by these actions," the Governor boasted that the state's $ 1.4 billion surplus would remain
"untouched." 4 Governor Daniels knew that the employees could do little to oppose him. He knew this because he
stripped them of their collective bargaining rights when he entered office in 2005.
(__) Better than strikes
(__) There is no negative effect of collective bargaining since voters drive down wages through initiatives while
collective bargaining increases employment. There would actually be a negative effect without collective bargaining
since we wouldn’t create job demands necessary to help the economy or maintain proper employment. John
Matsusaka of the University of Southern California68 writes:
The main message of this paper is that municipal employment policies are different when voters can override elected officials via initiatives, and the differences are consistent with a theory in which initiatives counteract
When collective bargaining is unavailable, the initiative mainly cuts

political economy problems stemming from patronage and interest groups.
employment, consistent with a model in which elected officials tend to pad the public payroll with patronage workers. When collective bargaining is available, the
initiative mainly cuts wages, consistent with a model in which voters use the initiative to undo supra-market
wages that emerge from collective bargaining. The initiative is also associated with smaller employment cuts
when collective bargaining is available than when it is unavailable. This pattern is consistent with the model because higher union wages cause elected officials to cut public sector
employment on their own, reducing the need for initiatives to roll back patronage jobs.
(__) In a study performed by the Economic Policy Institute69, it was found that countries with higher rates of
collective bargaining were more productive than without.
It is instructive to look at the economic performance of other advanced nations and the relation, if any, to the strength of unions and collective bargaining. Although some claim that union strength hurt economic efficiency,
it turns out that nations with more extensive collective bargaining have higher productivity, meaning they
produce more goods and services per hour worked. Nations with higher union density (in terms of the extent to which employment is
covered by collective bargaining agreements) also have less income inequality. These data suggest that greater union density, higher
productivity, and lesser income inequality reinforce each other or, at the least, coexist.
(__) CHECK A/T: PUBLIC SECTOR UNIONS ARE ANTIDEMOCRATIC
67
Dvorak, Todd C. "Note: Heeding "The Best of Prophets": Historical Perspective and Potential Reform of Public Sector Collective Bargaining in Indiana." Indiana Law Journal. (2010). Accessed April 29, 2010.
68
Matsusaka, John G. "Direct Democracy and Public Employees." SSRN. University of Southern California. May 2007. Accessed April, 28 2010.
69
Economic Policy Institute. “Unions and the Economy.” Excerpted from The State of Working America 2008/2009, Chapters and 8. Accessed March 30, 2009.
40
AFFIRMATIVE FILE
A/T: COLLECTIVE BARGAINING HARMS STUDENTS
(__) A national study has shown there is no negative association between collective bargaining and student
performance. Robert Carini writes in the Journal of Collective Negotiations70:
The two largest teacher unions in the United States claim millions of members and wield substantial political influence over educational policy. In light of the often negative claims about the operation of teacher unions in
I used data from the National

public schools, it is puzzling why so few scholars have empirically scrutinized whether collective bargaining shapes the academic performance of students.
Education Longitudinal Study to examine whether collective bargaining was related to student achievement or
student educational expectations. I employed multivariate regression techniques whenever possible to isolate possible effects
of bargaining from those of confounding variables. Findings suggest that bargaining was not associated with
either lower student achievement (math, reading, science, or history) or lower educational expectations between the eighth and tenth grades.
70
Carini, Robert M. "Is Collective Bargaining Detrimental to Student Achievement?: Evidence from a National Study." Journal of Collective Negotiations 32.3 (2008): 215-35. Web. 29 Apr. 2010.
41
AFFIRMATIVE FILE
A/T: UNIONS CREATE FREE-RIDING PROBLEMS
(__) The free-riding of unions can easily be solved through internal change. Marlow and Orzechowski write in the
journal, Public Choice71:
One potential problem is the free-rider effect: consumers of public goods have an incentive to free ride since it is difficult to exclude non-contributors from enjoying benefits. For example, establishing collective bargaining
If union support is voluntary, participation may be minimal, even though a

procedures is a formidable task for unorganized workers.
collective effort would result in net benefits for the group. One solution is a union that internalizes the free-
rider problem through compulsory dues and other organizational means. In response to free-rider problems, unions can also provide goods that
are nonrival or partially exclusive, such as technical and advisory services, pensions, and data collection and
analysis. Moreover, unions may lobby for favorable legislation that excludes nonunion members.
71
Marlow, Michael L., and William Orzechowski. "Public Sector Unions and Public Spending." Public Choice 1.16 (1996): 1-16. Springer. Web. 7 Apr. 2010.
42
AFFIRMATIVE FILE
A/T: COMPETITION MOTIVATES WORKERS
(__) Threats to outsource to private institutions demoralizes public sector workers. Fernandex and Smith write in the
Review of Public Personnel Administration72:
Public employee opposition to privatization has other potentially serious implications for policy makers and public managers to consider. During the last two decades, public employee morale and job satisfaction have been
hurt by unfavorable public attitudes and reform efforts that have targeted public bureaucracy and its members (Light, 2002; Rainey, 2003; U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board, 1987; Volcker Commission, 1989). The
Many
rhetoric surrounding privatization—especially the various allegations regarding wastefulness and inefficiency in government—is especially harsh and disparaging of public employees.
privatization advocates believe that competition, in the form of contracting out, will motivate public
employees to become more productive and efficient. Because of the wide- spread belief that government jobs
are lost when services are contracted out, however, public employees are more likely to view privatization as a
threat than as an incentive. Morale and job satisfaction are likely to suffer among employees who fear losing
their jobs or having to work for a private contractor for lower wages and benefits. The perceived threat to job security, in particular, might have serious consequences for motivation and job satisfaction, insofar as
job security appears to be an important motive among public sector employees (Houston, 2000; Jurkiewicz, Massey, & Brown, 1998; U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board, 1987).
72
Fernandez, Sergio, and Craig R. Smith. "Looking for Evidence of Public Employee Opposition to Privatization: An Empirical Study With Implications for Practice." Review of Public Personnel Administration 26.4 (2006): 356-81.
SAGE. Web. 7 Apr. 2010.
43

Affirmative Blocks

Uploaded by

Document Information

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Affirmative Blocks

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Bettendorf HW Tournament of Champions

A/T: PENSION BENEFITS TOO HIGH...................................................................................2

A/T: POLICE STRIKES HARM SECURITY............................................................................37

A/T: PENSION BENEFITS TOO HIGH

A/T: PENSIONS ARE TRILLIONS UNDERFUNDED

A/T: PENSIONS ARE UNDERFUNDED

when public pension plans get anywhere close

the examples above illustrate the

A/T: PENSION UNDERFUNDING DESTROYING ECONOMY

A/T: PENSION UNDERFUNDING IS SINKING CALIFORNIA

when related to the state’s population, budget or revenues it [pension

A/T: TEACHER UNIONS SUCK

With national standards often come

the collective voice of organized teachers can

(__) CHECK: A/T TEACHER SALARIES/BENEFITS TOO COSTLY

A/T: CAN’T FIRE TEACHERS

A/T: TEACHER SALARIES/BENEFITS TOO COSTLY

Industrialized Length of Percentage of wages

A/T: QUALITY OF SCHOOLS DECLINING

the collective voice of organized teachers can

A/T: TEACHER UNIONS KILL CHARTER SCHOOLS

A/T: CHARTER SCHOOLS GOOD

the Center for Education Reform is positive

A/T: US EDUCATION DECLINING IN COMPETITVENESS

A/T: TEACHER UNIONS BLOCK REFORM

(__) Teacher unions support reform. Princeton University25 writes:

many educators perceive the

A/T: UNIONS BLOCK MERIT PAY

MERIT PAY BAD

a Virginia school district superintendent said that the state’s

Moreover, the gain any

nearly all the families receiving the tax-supported state tuition

scholarships attend Catholic schools in Cleveland.

A/T: ARGUMENTS MUST ONLY BE PUBLIC SECTOR UNIONS

A/T: PUBLIC SECTOR UNIONS INCREASE DEFICIT SPENDING

their own job.

A/T: PUBLIC SECTOR UNIONS INCREASE TAXES

When collective bargaining is unavailable, the initiative mainly cuts

A/T: UNIONS BLOCK VOLUNTEERISM

A/T: UNIONS LEAD TO POLITICAL CORRUPTION

A/T: WORKERS FORCED TO JOIN UNIONS

A/T: UNIONS ENTRENCH DISCRIMINATION

By exploiting weaknesses in our labor laws that

A/T: UNIONS ARE MONOPOLIES

Civil servants may not be allowed by statute, for

A/T: PUBLIC SECTOR UNIONS ARE ANTIDEMOCRATIC

Professor Clyde Summers, a

A/T: PUBLIC SECTOR WAGES TOO HIGH

Federal accountants, for example, perform

the ALEC reports do not

A/T: PUBLIC SECTOR BENEFITS TOO HIGH

A/T: PUBLIC SECTOR UNIONS ENCUMBER GOVERNMENT

(__) CHECK A/T: UNIONS ARE MONOPOLIES

A/T: CONTRACTORS MORE EFFICIENT

One of President Bush’s first official actions

A/T: PUBLIC SECTOR UNIONS INCREASE GOVERNMENT

(__) CHECK A/T: CONTRACTORS MORE EFFICIENT

A/T: PUBLIC SECTOR UNION CAMPAIGN DONATIONS BAD

union political spending has substantially lagged

margin in both 1991–1992 and 2001–2002 election cycles (2005: 380).

A/T: PUBLIC SECTOR UNION LOBBYING BAD

A/T: PUBLIC SECTOR UNIONS INEFFICIENT

their own job.

(__) CHECK A/T: PUBLIC SECTOR UNIONS ENCUMBER GOVERNMENT